


as certain dark things

by snagov



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Car Sex, First Time, Jealousy, Love, M/M, Pining, Sex in the Bentley (Good Omens), Smut, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:40:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25004035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/snagov
Summary: After six-thousand years, the heart is the strongest muscle in Crowley's body.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 222





	as certain dark things

_"I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,_  
_or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off._  
_I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,_  
_in secret, between the shadow and the soul."_  
Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XVII

Have you ever fallen in love?

It doesn't go the way you might think. 

"We're here," Crowley says. He cuts the engine, peers up at the restored bookshop. Aziraphale unbuckles his belt, doesn't reach for the door handle. Makes no movement to crack the perfect seal of the Bentley, to crack open this ribcage of a car, keeping them here safe and sound. Thumping along. It's been a long, strange day. Crowley can still taste the hellfire that had licked his skin, filled his mouth. Can still see the sharp edges of Heaven on the backs of his eyelids. _They would have killed you, thrown you to the fire. Would have laughed about it. I wouldn't have known until I'd been on that bench for hours. Until I'd realized you weren't going to come._

Crowley had gotten to the park bench first. It had been exactly twenty-three minutes and seventeen seconds until he'd seen Aziraphale walk over, a careful custodian of his own body. It had been twenty-three minutes and seventeen seconds until he could breathe. He'd thrown back his head and laughed wildly as Aziraphale had told him about Michael and the towel, relief shattering his bones. Rattling around inside of him. His heart as unmoored as a pinball, lighting up everything inside of him as it strikes. 

_"To the world,_ " he'd said, raising his glass. 

_"To the world,"_ Aziraphale had agreed, toasting. They had filled up the hours of the afternoon there in the familiar patterns of dining. Spread the napkin over your lap, ready your fork and your knife. Linger over coffee and port. Lick dessert from the spoon. Even heading back to the bookshop is familiar. Same old roads, same corners, same stop signs. Same pedals, same speed.

Now, they're here. Two roads diverge. _What next?_ From his peripheral vision, Crowley looks at Aziraphale's hand on the handle. Short, square fingers. Made to take him apart, to fit into all the hollows of his body. To disarticulate his bones, to sew him back together with needle and spit-wet thread. 

The silence screams. Aziraphale swallows. Crowley watches how he looks at the bookshop. How many times have they been here? Sitting outside in Crowley's car, one of their warning frowns whispering _do not choose sides yet._ He wants to be smooth. A romantic lead in his own film. But you know how it is. The movies never show the crinkle of the receipts in your back pocket, the way you shake and drop your car keys. The empty coffee cup in the front seat, the plastic grocery bags forgotten in the back.

He isn't sure what to do.

"Will you come in?" Aziraphale asks, nerves shot through his voice. Crowley can hear them, hear them all. He's memorized this voice in every cadence, in every bit of song. 

"'Course, angel."

"Will you stay? Tonight?" (Aziraphale asks this like he is begging for Crowley to look under the bed, to make sure there are no monsters there.)

"Stay?" Crowley blinks. It's a hairpin turn. In this space of their side, he doesn't know what it means. He feels damp with the wet of his love. It sloshes around inside of him like a non-Newtonian fluid. Oobleck. If he leans over, bends a little, if he is not _perfectly still,_ it will all spill out. (Ooze out, splash over his shoes and Aziraphale's too. Stain them. _Got a bit of red on you, sorry about that. It's blood, yeah. Mine._ ) But if he chooses to grab it, tear it, punch it directly out, his love becomes solid. A stone wall. Immovable. Fixed.

You learn to live with it.

Crowley hopes he's something non-Newtonian too. He's slippery. Salt-crusted and waterlogged, a monster from the deep sea. Something strange and unknown, covered in spines and fangs. Something that should have never seen the light. Yes, he's all wet. Fucking spillable. He prays that if he's ever found out that he can go brick-wall solid. Silent, unmoving. That he will _not say a fucking thing. Not fuck it up. If you beg me to tell you, then it's your own goddamn fault, angel. Not mine._ (He doesn't believe it either.)

He looks over. Turns and sees only Aziraphale. The neon sign from the porn shop next door coats him in an orange light. Hair the color of haybales and straw. Wide eyes and a swallow at the throat. Nothing in his hands. Crowley sees only the faint shadow of a tartan thermos there. A memory threatening to bleed through. Crowley remembers taking the thermos with two hands, holding an act of faith carefully. 

_"You go too fast for me, Crowley,"_ Aziraphale had said then. Fifty-two years ago. 

_Tell me how fast to go. Tell me what you want. (Anything, anything you like.) Speed doesn't matter, as long as I know there's a destination. As long as we get there eventually._

They have been here before. In this late night, this dark hallway. This bubble of a car still closed, sealed off against the world. Crowley's had his hand on the door so many times, wondering if he should take the step, push it open. If it's time, if it's not too fast. _Let me lay you out in the tabernacle, make love to you in the dark._ It's never been time. Not yet. He's backed away, always staying in the hall. On the front porch. Reaching for the door, stepping back again.

_Is it time? (Is it too fast? Tell me.)_

* * *

How many times? How many? Let's move here through Crowley's past, biting into history. This museum of his bitter heart. He doesn't need to read the placards, to listen to the audio tour. He knows all the history already. Lived it too. Yes, let us be historians. Let us look back at Crowley’s past. See the trouble he’s in.

It all started on a brick wall, watching Adam and Eve leave through the Eastern Gate. Crowley had glanced over with mild curiosity.

" _Didn't you have a flaming sword? You did, didn't you? It was flaming like anything. Lost it already, have you?"_

 _"I gave it away!"_ Aziraphale had said, worry taking the measure of his face. 

_"You what?"_ Crowley had asked, blinking. _What kind of angel are you then?_ He had realized there with an unpleasant hiccup that he would always divide his life into two epochs. Before Aziraphale; After Aziraphale. Love, for some, comes quickly. Crowley does nothing halfway.

In 1872, Crowley had been in love with a man who kept winecorks. They'd drink together, here and there, wiling away the hours. At the end of the evening, no matter whose place it was or if they were out on the town, Aziraphale would always take the winecorks in a careful hand. He'd roll them around in his palm, making sure they're all there, all accounted for, then slip them into his coat pocket. _For safekeeping,_ he had said once after Crowley had asked. 

Crowley had thought about safekeeping. Sidled up to Aziraphale there at the duck pond, pressed a request for holy water into Aziraphale's hand. _You're worth the danger. This is worth the risk. I'll fight all of Hell for you._

Aziraphale had dashed the note into the pond. He'd stormed off. Crowley had slept for decades. Tossed and turned in fits. When he'd woken up, he'd heard stories of the company the Soho bookseller had kept. Stories how Oscar Wilde had lingered there, sticking around like bad wallpaper. Sometime in 1997, sitting in a parked car, Crowley had finally mentioned it. 

"You weren't _there,_ Crowley!" Aziraphale had snapped. 

"Was I supposed to be?" Crowley had hissed, glaring at his own fingers curled on the steering wheel. He hadn't known why he was gripping it. They weren't moving. "You were real clear that you had others to _fraternize_ with."

"Are you jealous?"

"I'm not - " He had blinked. _Yeah. That's what it is. I am._ It runs the length of him so obviously now. Jealousy, like a window through his skin, right into the meat of him. He’d like to take a brick. Smash it through. Let it spill all over, let the glass scatter. _Hope you’re wearing shoes, hope it didn’t get in your eye. My fault._

Making a mess again. 

"Why?" Aziraphale asked. 

"Why _what_?"

"Why are you jealous?"

"Fuck, angel. That's _not_ it, I'm not fucking _jealous_ , okay, I'm just frustrated cause -" _(I'm jealous, yes. But I'm mostly afraid.)_

"I've been jealous," Aziraphale had said, quiet. His words half-tucked away.

Crowley had blinked. "Huh?"

Aziraphale paused, breathing in. He'd looked away. "You spent a lot of time with Leonardo. A few centuries ago." His voice grew smaller. "I didn't see you much. Not then."

"What?" Crowley spilled. "Of _da Vinci_? I mean, we were friends. Got blind drunk, he could _definitely_ hold his liquor - wait, do you mean _jealous_ jealous? Like proper - " He makes some strange, complicated gesture with his hand. (If pressed, even he wouldn't have been able to explain what it meant.)

Aziraphale had stared at him. "Yes, _proper_."

Crowley's hand had twitched then, aching to reach out to him. He hadn't been able to. Couldn't cross the distance. There he had been again, one hand on the doorknob, wanting to open the door. Not ready yet. 

Instead, the car door had opened. Aziraphale had gotten out. Slammed it behind him.

True story.

Let's keep going. Keep looking at Crowley's mistakes. In 1601, Crowley had been in love with a man who always read the ends of novels first before starting them. It had been a surprise the first time, leaving Crowley blinking at the way he'd opened the book, flipped straight to the end. Found the final paragraphs. Crowley had watched then as he'd evaluate the ending, roll it around on his tongue, flip to the start or put the book down. _What's the point of starting something if it will only break your heart?_ Aziraphale had explained once, as Crowley had opened his mouth with _why_ curled up on his tongue. 

He had nodded, swallowed it down. Later that year, they had sat close together in the gallery at the Globe, watching the crowds press forth at Hamlet's unprecedented success. A warm hand had brushed against Crowley's. He'd left his own there, his pulse dancing in the vein on the back of his hand. 

"Thought you didn't go in for sad endings, angel," he'd murmured in a low voice.

Aziraphale had turned, looking at him. Carefully. Far too thoughtfully. His eyes matching the pale-sky blue of his doublet. His ruff like a cloud at his smooth-peach throat. 

"Depends on the story," Aziraphale had said, not looking away. They are close, too close to be looking at each other like this. It's dark in the gallery, everyone's looking at the stage. Aziraphale's hands are white-knuckled on his bag of chestnuts, his breath is coming quickly. 

Everyone knows when they're about to be kissed.

One hand on the doorknob. Open the door or keep it closed? Crowley had stumbled, hesitated. Taken too long. He turned back to the play, flame-red and furious with himself. 

Still, a true story.

Wait, there's more. Look here. Once, in 1967, Crowley had fallen for a man who only ate apples from the bottom up. Who never bit the side if he could help it, not at first. Instead, Aziraphale turned the apple over, red and shine-skinned, glinting in that bit of shit kitchen light. That Tungsten yellowness from ancient lightbulbs. He'd gone in teeth first (uneven and white) and devoured it like a wolf at the table. Piece by piece by piece, the juice wet on his chin. At the end, he held nothing but the stem. Not even the core. Crowley had looked at him then with question-mark brows. " _I don't want to miss a thing,"_ Aziraphale had said, wiping his face.

"You've got wet on you," Crowley had said, passing a kitchen towel over.

"Thank you, my dear," Aziraphale said, "Didn't want to make a mess."

Crowley considered himself, vibrating slowly apart in his dark clothes, making a mess of himself. _Stop,_ he thinks, _get a fucking grip on yourself. Keep it together._ The heart is a muscle. It's stronger with use, more adept with practice. Why do we forget this? Why do we pretend it's a piece of cake, a slice of pie? Why do we assume that if it's been used before, if a taste has been offered, there's less for us to have later? Crowley shifts on his pivot-hips, glancing over at Aziraphale. The weight of his love pounds through, loud as church bells.

It had all started with an apple. He has been in love for six-thousand years. Crowley's heart is the strongest muscle in his body.

Another true story.

* * *

They are standing at the edge again, one hand on the door, ready to push it open. Crowley licks his lips, seeing how Aziraphale is looking at him. The same distance they once were, there in 1601. They had almost kissed once. Almost.

He'd fucked it all up then. He's here now, with wide yellow eyes in the driver's seat, wondering how he'll fuck it all up this time.

(We’re brutal when it comes to our own mistakes, our children there at the table, ready to spill a candle, grab a knife by the blade, stick their fingers in a socket. We pull them back violently, our voices rattle loudly with fear. We’ve already fucked up, got the scars. _I love you too much, I don’t want you to be hurt._ The trouble is that to a child there and their garden-ears, it doesn’t sound like fear. It’s just loud. Only screaming. Once upon a time, God had made a Garden. She in her Infinite Wisdom (heavy with knowing, heavy with _too much_ , where can she put it down?) had made mankind innocent. Free of knowledge. Free of burden. Weightless. Stuck the Tree there like a light socket, said _don’t you dare go near it. Don’t stick your finger in. Don’t put it in your mouth._ You know how it goes.)

"Stay? Yeah, I mean - " he stammers, "Yeah, if you like. Anything you want, you know. I'll just hang out on your sofa. Drink up your good scotch. Do you mean all night? Sorry, didn't mean to assume, cause that -"

" _Anthony J. Crowley,_ " Aziraphale says, pushing still forward, the neon-orange light spilling all over him, "Shut up and kiss me."

Crowley blinks, pauses. Falls right in, pushed over by a few syllables. Mouth against mouth, skin against skin. This is the story of magnets, that it requires effort to keep them apart. Separate. If you let go, if you stop holding back, stop fighting, see how they slam together. Crowley tastes salt. Pulls at the pale hair, clamors against Aziraphale's mouth, trying to swallow the sun. “What the fuck,” he whispers against Aziraphale. Aziraphale is hot to the touch, firm and splendidly solid. Crowley's long hands fist with desperation and fury and he is there, at the limit. Aziraphale's fingers catch and tangle in his Mars-storm hair, holding him right there, sucking at his lip, taking big gulps of air from the breath they are sharing. Crowley cannot remember how they got here. Rocking together, his eyes dark and wide, whispering _oh my god, oh my god, oh my god_ over and over like a rosary.

_I always knew it would be different with you. That everyone else's body is a translation. That I would touch them and it wouldn't be quite right. We'd get the point across and get there eventually. But I knew with you it would come as easily as a native tongue, that you'd understand every word, every nuance, there'd be nothing to hide behind. I couldn't say 'oh, I didn't mean it like that' because you were there when we invented those words. You know the shape of every meaning on my tongue. This is why I never kissed you, because there would be no translation necessary. No delay, nothing to hide behind. You'd speak the same language, you'd know all the words._

_You'd know it all, everything I meant._

"I've got you," Aziraphale says, holding his face tight. There between his winecork-secreting fingers, there in his apple-eating hands. How have they made it to the backseat? Crowley doesn't know, doesn't care. He peels his jacket off, throwing it beneath them.

"How do you know?" Crowley gasps. _Did you skip to the end? Did you read the back of the book? What ending is there? Tell me._

Aziraphale kisses him. "I don't, not exactly. But I know that I love you."

 _Do you? What if it's not the way I love you? What if it's not enough, what if it can't keep me tethered down? What if you stop?_ He wants to say _don't say it, don't say that you love me_ but he can't bring himself to form the words. Aziraphale says _I love you_ and Crowley can only think _rotten luck._

"Angel, you can't mean that, you _can't_ \- " 

Crowley's wrists hit the seat, there up over his head. Aziraphale leans in with careful, calibrated pressure, pinning Crowley there. Crowley flexes his wrist, feeling it shift, the tendons moving forth and back again. The measure of his freedom. (He can leave if he wishes. He doesn't wish.) 

"Don't tell me what I mean," Aziraphale whispers. His eyes wide and focused. Mouth left open. His other hand strokes Crowley's hair. " _Don't_." 

Crowley nods. It's that slow and measured movement of carrying a full bucket, a glass of water about to spill. Be careful, be careful. If you're not, it will get all over the place. Crowley is careful always, underneath it all. He tests the pressure of Aziraphale's hands on his wrists, feeling it firm and steady. Hot-handed. His heartbeat does as it wishes there, knocking about the jailcell of his ribcage. _You can feel it._ His cock has grown impossibly hard, damp and heated, pressed like begging against Aziraphale's stomach. _You can feel everything._

He knows his eyes are wild. He doesn't need to sit up and see them in the rearview mirror, doesn't need to look to know. He's losing control, losing the edges of himself. His irises snake widely. He writhes slightly, breathing roughly. Aziraphale closes his eyes briefly, moaning once. 

_Fuck,_ thinks the glass of water, there at the top of the stairs. Too full, too carefully balanced. Nothing gets out cleanly. It's just the lift of a jaw. Crowley pushes forward as much as he can, hands held down by loving grace. Kisses Aziraphale with a hungry mouth, with a knocking tongue. Salt-wet and open. Aziraphale's hand curls into Crowley's hair, pulling slightly against the scalp. Grounding him, keeping him there. Keeping him steady. Crowley gasps into the kiss, gives himself up into Aziraphale's mouth. He will make a mess of things. (It's okay, it's alright. It's Aziraphale. Some messes are invited. Beloved. Some we will make again and again and again.)

_Spill me._

His jacket falls to the car floor forgotten. (He will apologize to the Bentley later.) Aziraphale is pressing into him like a starved man. His lips are soft. Crowley runs his tongue along the seam and Aziraphale parts for him like the sea. There is a small moan as electricity sparkles up his spine and the crown of his skull. It is his moan, his sound. Aziraphale has him. In his broad hands and broad shoulders, Crowley is safe and surrounded (when has he felt this way before?). He bumps his sharp-cut nose against Aziraphale's as he reaches and seeks for more touch. _I knew I needed you, I didn't know how much._ Crowley shifts hard against Aziraphale, not knowing where to put his neck, his hips (he doesn't need to think of his arms, held up above in love). He has no art, no knowledge, love has never been a language Crowley was fluent in.

Aziraphale rocks his hips, moves his hands over Crowley's skinnyfuck ribs, pressing into his chest, into his shoulders. Down the long measure of his stomach, his needy hips, that desperate catastrophe of his redwant dick there, furious between his legs. 

“Can I?” Aziraphale whispers, voice thick. Crowley grits his teeth with need. He has not been touched by any hand other than his own in centuries. (He is afraid he might discorporate on the spot.) 

“Yes,” he hisses out as Aziraphale's hand sinks lower, makes deft work of his buttons, his zipper. His fingers disappear into the dark denim and he is seared onto Crowley’s skin (to be remembered always, to be remembered later). Crowley is good at overthinking but for once his brain is silent, for once he can forget and simply _exist_ as Aziraphale's hand runs over the head and dips into the clear liquid pooling already, swipes it down along the heavy-veined underside and gives a quick pump.

“Oh _fucking hell_ -” Crowley whispers and he feels the curve of Aziraphale’s grin against him, the moist hot air of his heavy exhalation. Aziraphale's hips are canting against his thigh as his hand is moving and Crowley reaches for him. “Let me, please -” and he pushes Aziraphale's shirt up and pulls the waistband down and there it is, he aches to take and touch and fuck. He follows Aziraphale’s movements and slicks his hand and begins to pulse to Aziraphale’s rhythm. Aziraphale is quiet but Crowley hears the whispers against his ear, Aziraphale’s tongue flicking his earlobe between words. “I love you, I love you, I love you."

Crowley might rattle apart, pressed here into Aziraphale's hands, daring to be loved. Aziraphale noses at his neck, biting gently. Sucking like a lamprey eel, coaxing the bruise blood to the surface. Crowley shudders and shifts. He worries about his throat. He worries about his hellblood. _Careful, angel._

"I'm close," he hisses.

"Wait," Aziraphale says, "Not yet." He pulls at the hem of Crowley's shirt. "Take it off." 

Crowley peels the shirt from his back, throws his jacket down over the backseat. What the fabric doesn't catch, there are miracles for. 

"Do with me what you will." 

"Are you certain?"

"I haven't thought about anything else for a real fuckin' long time, angel. Yeah, I'm bloody _certain_."

 _You were my first love. You never forget your first love. (I've never stopped. You are also my only love.)_ Perhaps, strictly speaking, Aziraphale isn't Crowley's first love. Not in that unmeasurable dark march before Creation, that swirling mess of before. Crowley had been born under another name and into the love of God. It's a different kind of love, he's making the distinction. 

"I remember you," Aziraphale whispers. "Up there."

"You don't." _Please don't._

He remembers the mess he had been when he had been brought before the heavenly tribunal. His face battered and bleeding, stubborn even then. 

"You were gorgeous. I couldn't stop looking at you. You stood there eyes half-closed, defiant. It was -" Aziraphale pauses, flounders. "Thrilling." 

He's here, so bare and so obvious. One long hot flush from navel to neck. Aziraphale's hands move up, 

_Fuck, angel, your hands are like fire._ Those pulling fingers wrapped around him, unforgiving and soft. Relentless. Over and over and over again, his redwant dick there hot and desperate. He needs something (he knows what it is). "You can't - you gotta stop, angel, I'm gonna -" Crowley gasps, forgetting to breathe, forgetting that he does not need to.

Aziraphale watches him, head tilted up slightly. His eyes soft and starved, mouth parted. He doesn't ever look away. Just this, open eyes and open mouth and a furious fist, taking in the measure of Crowley's own ruin. "I can't what, darling? You're going to what?" He slows down just slightly, changes the angle a fraction. Enough to put a cap on it, to level off the pressure. Crowley feels like a shaken soda bottle, ready to explode. _Don't go unscrewing the cap._

"I'm - " _Going to die, going to collapse, going to explode, going to be a ruin, never going to be able to get up, never going to be able to leave. Never going to be able to stop. God, you know that, don't you. Oh fuck, I need - I need so much, you, to come, fucking anything. Just - please._ Crowley tilts his head back, eyes slammed shut. Everything is too much, far too much for his scatterbeat heart. He's so close. 

Aziraphale hasn't said yet. (He's promised to wait. Go slow. He can't yet, it's too fast. Aziraphale hasn't said.)

There's a low sound to Aziraphale's voice, something teasing and dark. Velvet. "Are you going to come?" he asks. "Is that it?"

Crowley fucking _whines._

"Is that what you want, my dear? Is that it?" 

"Aziraphale - " _Aziraphale, Aziraphale, Aziraphale, Aziraphale._ (Words don't matter, nothing matters. Just this, the heartbeat against him where their chests meet. Pressed close together, the kisses pressed to his throat, to his pulse points. The cool air where Aziraphale has been, has dipped his tongue, left his skin open to the air. Crowley can feel the trails of his wet tongue like breadcrumbs, crisscrossed paths, markers as if to say _I was here once._ He moans Aziraphale's name like a supplication. If there had been room, he would have sunk to his knees. Instead, there is only this leather of the backseat, the arm Aziraphale has wrapped around his waist, the clever hand drawing the beat of the torment out.) 

"Come for me, darling," Aziraphale whispers, there into his neck. A brush of his thumb there, right over the tip of him. Tipped over. Ruined. 

He screams there with no sound, mouth wide and desperate. Claws into Aziraphale's neck, his arms, his skin, gripping and needing, the world gone a terrible white behind his eyelids. It sparks like a smashed transformer through him, electric and dangerous. Ruinous.

He comes on Aziraphale's scorching hand, dreaming of fire. 

_Christ,_ he thinks, draped over Aziraphale, head on that soft-roll shoulder, catching his breath.

"I'm not done with you," Aziraphale whispers, tracing a finger gently along Crowley's long nervous-knock spine. "I want you inside of me."

" _Fuck_ ," Crowley hisses. 

_I always wondered. I've always wanted to know you, the inside of you and your body too. The exact temperature of you. I want to take it with my fingers pressed deep within you, pressing and curving, finding the shatterpoints of you._ How does it feel? To fuck and be fucked? Crowley doesn't know the latter, not yet (though he's used to the ache of it, to the awareness of the empty spaces of his body, the exact measurements of need). He fucks forward, sinks within Aziraphale's body, slamming his eyes shut as it's just too much, too much, too much. The first push is the deepest. 

"Angel, fuck, I can't, I'm not gonna be able -" He's hissing and doesn't have the words. _Tell me how. How quick, what angle, how you like it. Don't let me fuck this up. I've always been so afraid that if I ever got here, ever got deep inside of you, fucked you up against something (like this), I'd never be able to pull myself back out. Never be able to pull apart. I don't think I was wrong. (How can I possibly ever leave?)_

"Tell me."

"Not gonna be able to stop," he whispers, hips underlining his words. Crowley sinks deeper, deeper into Aziraphale's arching body. _Why does it feel like you're possessing me? I'm inside of you but instead I can feel you reaching into every part of me. My skull, my hair, my veins, my bones. Taking all my cells, my scraps of skin. You look at me and scrawl your name across the top. Claim me. You licked me, so I'm yours._

Aziraphale moans. "Then don't." 

"Fuck."  
  
"I don't see why you have to. I've thought about it, leaving you inside of me always. Keeping you there, swallowed up by me. You'd fall asleep in me, wake up -"

"Ngk - " Crowley closes his eyes. _Yes, fuck, leave me inside of you. I'll never have to part, never separate. I'll keep myself hard for you, for years and years and years. You can just fuck yourself on me when you want, tell me when you want me to flip you over. Make you come. Over and over and over again, at your service whenever you like. I'll make you come when you're tired, when you're moody. When you're happy. When it's sunny, when it's raining too. Let me give myself to you, shattered and taped back together. Look at us, one body, indivisible by God._

"But that would mean we'd miss so many things, wouldn't we?" 

"What. Fucking. Things," Crowley hisses, fucking into Aziraphale as he speaks. Punctuating his words with the snap-forward of his hips. He's drowning in the deep, in the slip of skin. Aziraphale around him, keeping him safe. His words blank out with each drag of his cock, the immeasurable pleasure of fucking. (The backseat will be a wreck after this. Crowley cannot find it in himself to care.) 

"Like how I'm going to wrap your gorgeous hair around my hand and have you suck my cock."

Lightning strikes his spine, shatters around the crown of his head. "Angel!" Crowley hisses, "Christ - god, fuck, _yes,_ okay - "

Aziraphale reaches one hand up then, buried into the mulberry-red of Crowley's hair. Wraps it around his hand and pulls. He smiles. 

" _Fuck_ ," Crowley hisses. 

"You know what to do." Light from a nearby streetlamp glints in Aziraphale's eyes. _Yes._ He slides out of Aziraphale, kissing down the length of his body as he goes. Aziraphale keeps one hand in his hair, with his other, he takes Crowley's left. Weaves their fingers together like threads on a loom (once, he had been a tapestry-weaver). Crowley takes Aziraphale's cock in his other hand, his cavernous mouth. A throat to fuck, a pressing velvet tongue. _I love the salt of you and the bitter too._ There's something comforting in the pleasant unpleasantness of Aziraphale's taste. Something their side, earthy and human. If Aziraphale had tasted of nectar, Crowley knows he might have spat it out. This is nothing of ambrosia nor brimstone. Just salt, just skin. Just Aziraphale, pressing against his tongue. _Open wide._

God, he wants to swallow it all. _Stain me,_ he begs no one. Spattered with white, heaven-marked. 

"Darling," Aziraphale cries, "I'm going to - " 

Crowley squeezes his fingers, his long, thin hand still clenched in Aziraphale's own. Sweat-damp, twitching in the same dance of the cock in his mouth. _Go ahead,_ he says through his fingers. _I want you to. I'll take it all._

Aziraphale cries out in a beautiful mess. A star-shatter supernova, losing control of his hips, squeezing hard at their woven hands. It's so much, so much. Spills out of his mouth, all over his right hand. Wet, damp. Crowley leans back, breathing hard. He wraps it around himself, covered in Aziraphale (there and panting, watching with wide eyes). There he is, fucking his fist, fucking Aziraphale back into him. 

He moans.  
  
"Oh hell," Aziraphale whispers.

"Angel," he says. "I'm dying here." 

"Are you close?"

"You have no fucking idea," Crowley hisses, his own hand a dangerous pressure. Each drag up and down of his fingers brings him ever closer. He could stay here always, pushed between Aziraphale and the soft leather seats of his car, coming over and over again. 

"Stop then," Aziraphale says.  
  
"Shit." 

Aziraphale pushes his hair back behind his ears, drags his index finger along the butcher-edge of Crowley's cheekbone, his angled jaw. Kisses his shoulder, so close here, hovering over Aziraphale. "You fuck me like you've thought about it before. Imagined it."

"Fuck," Crowley mutters, "I don't think I've thought about _anything fucking else_ in -"

"How long?" Aziraphale asks. Crowley hears the question. _How long have you loved me?_ His ears burn red, his narrow chest too. He's always been as red as a confession.

"Few thousand years," Crowley says. "Give or take."

Those fingers spread out over the heat of his embarrassment, gentling the burn at his throat, his chest. Aziraphale kisses the hot side of his neck. "What have you wanted most? Do you want to come like this, on your own hand? Or do you want to be inside me or I could fuck you - " 

"Shit, _yes_." 

"Yes, what, my love?"

"The thing -" 

"Say it," Aziraphale whispers, hot mouth on a burning ear. "Ask me for what you want. I'll give you anything you like." 

"I want you," he says, manages. "I want you to fuck me." 

"Lie down," Aziraphale says. They shift on the seats, a careful dance with their trousers wrapped like ropes around their thighs. He pulls his own jeans down further still. It's the easiest thing in the world to let his legs fall open, To part his thighs like peeling orange segments from each other, offering himself up. Miraculously ready, miraculously soaked.

 _Fuck. God, I can feel you, every bump of you. I wish I were sandpaper, that I could wear you down inside of me, keep the dust and cells of you forever._ He bites his lip with the way he is filled up, that ache in him silenced by steady flesh. There can be poetry in this but Crowley doesn't want poetry, not now. Maybe later, perhaps tomorrow (if he can keep this), it can be soft and gentle. Stanzas of skin. _Right now, just move. Please, fuck, just fuck me until the world ends. Remake me, rearrange the furniture of my bones until you're comfortable. Settle in, you can stay as long as you like._ He cries out with the movement, the nudge of body within body within body, Aziraphale's soft stomach scraping over his shotgun cock. He's going to come (there's nothing that can stop it now). He wants it, he doesn't want it. _Don't stop, please, god, yes. Just like that, please. Keep going, keep, just like that. Use me as you like, fuck me through it. Keep going._

"Aziraph - " he cries out, stopped by a kiss. A mouth on his own, an endless repeating piece of perfection. Aziraphale fucks into him and Crowley pushes his own tongue into Aziraphale. Pushes, knocking and demanding. One body, one endless form. The snake with its own tail, the ouroboros. Once upon a time, we were two faces and two heads, one perfect body that had never known love. The measure of love is emptiness. Loss. The spaces we need to fill. The spaces you once occupied (and myself in you). Once, early on, love was unknown. 

They fit together now, perfectly made. Crowley cries out as Aziraphale fists his cock there, tight between them. Drives in deeper, claiming the empty spaces within Crowley. 

"Come for me, love," Aziraphale says, brushing the request across his mouth. Kissing him again. 

Crowley does. White-eyed and white-worlded, spilling out all over the place. Aziraphale fucks him through it, moving to bite at Crowley's neck, pick up the pace. Crying out and filling him right back up. Crowley’s eyes are wide, watching how Aziraphale's face contorts into pleasure, mouth slightly agape with furrowed, sweat-sheened brow. (He wants to wipe the sweat-soaked hair from Aziraphale’s forehead, he wonders if that is too intimate.)

 _Don’t speak._ He wants to stay here in this long measure. Aziraphale’s coat drapes around them both, a silent curtain to a private world.

"What happens next?" Crowley finally asks as the night beats on ceaselessly outside the Bentley's windows.

"Next?" Aziraphale whispers. "Next, you take me home. To that bed of yours."

Crowley curls his hands. "And after that?"

There's a soft light in Aziraphale's eyes. "I love you," he says. "That's what comes after."

 _For how long?_ Crowley thinks. Doesn't say it. "I can't be another - Is this -" He's desperate in his love. He'll take what he can get. Look at him, a fucking thief in the night. He'd open up Aziraphale's heart like a kitchen drawer, steal every scrap of tenderness and all the silverware too. If he could, if he could get his sticky fingers on it.

"I've never loved anyone the way I love you," Aziraphale says. 

_You can't mean that._ Crowley closes his eyes as Aziraphale traces the shape of his face. His eyes, his nose. Jaw and mouth. The zygomatic arch, the proud brow. Hearts are such traitorous things. He wants to curl up in his doubt, his ever-steady fear. His heart, always the Judas Iscariot of him, believes Aziraphale. _You can't mean that,_ Crowley thinks. His heart, the traitorous thing, sounds out _you do, you do, you do._

 _I don't understand,_ he thinks against the beating of his fallen heart. Crowley does not delude himself with thoughts that he is good. Everyone knows the stories about demons (they're in all the books). He knows from the keratinocyte-tip of his skin to the marrow in his bones that he is made to ruin. Black India ink which stains all things. The soot from the cinnamon peelers that mark all surfaces. One cannot brush against a hellthing and come back clean. No, he knows this. It's not worth fussing over. (You can't do a thing about it.)

Aziraphale kisses him, rolls into him. Pulls Crowley against him. Crowley knows that they smell of each other. "You've got brimstone on you," he says. 

"Good,” Aziraphale whispers. Crowley's eyes widen as Aziraphale nestles his head into the crook of Crowley's arm. Waves of warmth wash over him, his stomach clenches. Where his fingers have trailed over Aziraphale's skin, Aziraphale smells of him. Where Aziraphale has touched Crowley, Crowley bears him too. Anointed by Aziraphale's cologne and aftershave. Notes of sandalwood and myrrh. Citrus of ambergris and orange. The cinnamon and clove of his hair oil. There is no mistaking it, anyone near would immediately pass by and know that they belong. They have marked each other. A pair, a matched set. 

"Take me home," Aziraphale whispers. 

Crowley closes his eyes. He pictures a door, a doorknob. They have been here so many times. Reality shifts around them, the backdrop of Soho replacing itself with Mayfair. He opens his eyes to Aziraphale's warm smile.

"Come upstairs then," Crowley whispers, kissing Aziraphale. Taking his hand. He's shattering apart, his atoms oscillating wildly. This long sandpaper scrape of love, leaving nothing recognizable of him behind. Aziraphale here in his car, a beautiful man with blueshift eyes and linen-white hair, saying _I love you I love you I love you._ Crowley has never had the words for this. Never dreamt he might get here, to a prayer for which no words exist. 

"Alright," Aziraphale says, eyes shining. 

Crowley puts his hand on the car door, unlocking it. Leans over, kissing Aziraphale again. Once more, always more. (It will never be enough.) _Come upstairs then, if it's not too fast._

"I love you," he says. He had dreamt it would be harder to say. It isn't, not when there is a heart to catch you. Instead, it is the easiest thing in the world, falling in love.

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted with permission.


End file.
